Yahoo Podcasting and Media Tagging Patent Applications

I haven’t spend hadn’t spent a lot of time at Yahoo Podcasts, but it looks looked interesting (the service closed in October, 2007).

This method of delivering audio information saw a great surge of usage in 2000, with a number of online news agencies making audio broadcasts available to their visitors. Video has also become pretty popular on the Web.

Twelve new patent applications from Yahoo focus on a wide number of topics involving podcasts and video, including a podcast search engine, sending podcasts out to mobile devices, tagging podcasts and pictures and media files, advertising in podcasts and media, using location tags within different media, and a recommendation system for media files.

Systems and methods are provided for subscribing to podcast feeds from a single location. A server-based search engine is provided that identifies podcasts located throughout a network that are available to a user’s rendering device and presents the user with a user interface from which the user can search for podcasts, subscribe to an identified podcast, listen to an identified podcast, or obtain additional information related to an identified podcast.

The present invention relates to a system and method for pushing podcasts to mobile devices, such as cellular phones, from a remote subscription management system. A subscription management system is described that is adapted to retrieve episodes from one or more remote computing devices and transmit retrieved episodes to a mobile device over a wireless network. The transmissions are made via a telephone number associated with the mobile device. The system includes a datastore, in communication with the server, containing at least one telephone number of a mobile device associated with a user and at least one podcast subscription associated with the user. The podcast lists episodes that are located on one or more of the remote computing devices. When a search module identifies a new episode, the system retrieves the new episode and transmits it to the mobile device using the telephone number to address the transmission.

Systems and methods are provided for automatically delivering media files with advertisements over a network. A method and system is disclosed for automatically adding an advertisement to the beginning or the end of a media file, such as a podcast episode, when the media file is requested by a consumer. In another aspect, the media file may be automatically searched for an advertisement marker, such as a specific tone or data element in the media file, that acts as a submission point for the automatic insertion of an advertisement into the media file. Aspects of the present invention allow for automatic insertion of advertisements after the creation of the media file, potentially without any interaction between the creator and the advertiser. The systems can be implemented at a central server, at the media file source, at a consumer’s media player or distributed throughout various computing devices.

A system and method for tagging discrete locations and/or sections within a pre-existing media file with images without modifying the media file are disclosed. The system includes a rendering device that receives user tag selections and creates information that can be used when rendering the media file in the future. When a tagged media file is rendered by a device capable of interpreting the information, the images are concurrently displayed on the interface of the rendering device. The discrete locations and/or sections can be associated with one or more user-selected image files. In an embodiment, the system and method can be performed without modifying the media file itself and thus no derivative work is created

A system and method are provided for identifying discrete locations and/or sections within a pre-existing media file without modifying the media file. The discrete locations and/or sections can be associated with one or more user-selected descriptors. The system and method allows for the identifying information to be communicated to consumers of the media file and the media file to be selectively rendered by the consumer using the identifying information, thus allowing a consumer to render only the portion of the media file identified or render from a given discrete location in the media file. In an embodiment, the system and method can be performed without modifying the media file itself and thus no derivative work is created.

Systems and methods are provided for automatically delivering media files with advertisements over a network. A method and system is disclosed for automatically adding an advertisement to the beginning or the end of a media file, such as a podcast episode, when the media file is requested by a consumer. In another aspect, the media file may be automatically searched for an advertisement marker, such as a specific tone or data element in the media file, that acts as a submission point for the automatic insertion of an advertisement into the media file. Aspects of the present invention allow for automatic insertion of advertisements after the creation of the media file, potentially without any interaction between the creator and the advertiser. The systems can be implemented at a central server, at the media file source, at a consumer’s media player or distributed throughout various computing devices.

The present invention relates to a system and method for selecting advertisement for delivery over a network in response to requests received from remote computing devices. In one aspect, the present invention includes a method and system for automatically matching an advertisement with a media file, such as a podcast episode, when the media file has been requested by a consumer. Aspects of the present invention allow for automatic selection of advertisements after the creation of the media file, potentially without any interaction between the creator and the advertiser.

The present invention relates to a system and method for recommending tags and/or content items in response to requests received from remote computing devices. In one aspect, a content item recommendation system comprises a database configured to store an identifier of a first content item, a first tag and information from which a tag density associated with the first tag and with the first content item may be derived. The tag density may be a measure of times a tag has been associated with a content item by any user of a plurality of users who are members of a community. The system also comprises a recommendation engine configured to receive search results containing the first tag from a search engine and to correlate the first tag with information stored in the database. The recommendation engine may be further configured to determine a recommended tag, based on a recommendation threshold and a tag density, the tag density associated with both the recommended tag and the first content item

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